A two-month-old tiger cub was found sedated and hidden among stuffed toy tigers in luggage at Bangkok airport after scanners detect heartbeat.

The endangered tiger had been sedated with tranquillisers and hidden in the bag.

But officials at Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport grew suspicious when a 31-year-old Thai woman, who has not been named, struggled with her out-sized baggage at Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi airport while boarding a flight for Iran.

An X-ray machine revealed the cub's beating heart, but when the woman was questioned, she could not explain why there was a real tiger in her bag.

"The woman trying to check in the oversized bag denied any knowledge of the tiger. She said she was carrying it for someone else," said Nirat Nipanand, an airport customs official in charge of tracking animals.

DNA samples from the cub - which has been sent to a wildlife rescue centre in Ratchaburi province - are being tested to discover whether it was born in captivity or seized from the wild.

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Tiger populations in Asia are under constant threat from poaching and illegal trade and wildlife groups have been lobbying governments to increase monitoring and enforce tougher penalties.

Traffic, an organisation that fights wildlife smuggling, hailed the discovery.

Chris Shepherd, Traffic's south-east Asia deputy director, said: "If people are trying to smuggle live tigers in their check-in luggage, they obviously think wildlife smuggling is easy to get away with and do not fear reprimand. Only sustained pressure . . . can change that."